Dr. Helen Bond

Do we have holiness in our own lives?

holiness in the synagogues, perhaps holiness in our own gatherings.

And a lot of the things that the rabbis talk about are things that seem to be discussed by Pharisees, again, to do with purity, to do with tithing, to do with temple, actually, even though it's been destroyed, table fellowship, lots of things like that.

Just really, how do you live out a Jewish life?

This is what they're asking.

In this sort of second, third, fourth century period, we're now completely under Roman domination.

We've got no temple.

How do you live out this life?

And I think a lot of Pharisaic ideas sort of come into this period, but probably bound up by other Essenes, the Dead Sea Scrolls guys, other people, priestly ideas.

They're all sort of in this mix because certainly it's a very different situation to the one that was the case in the time of Jesus.

Yeah, I think that's possibly true because, I mean, in a way, the high priests, the aristocratic priesthoods have lost their power base.

They've lost the temple.

They've lost their whole sort of rationale, really.

There are many, many, many priests within Jewish society, loads, so many priests that they had to be on a rota system at the Jerusalem temple.

So I would think it's unlikely that there weren't some sort of priestly priesthood

involvement in this sort of restructuring of Judaism after the fall of the temple.

But I mean, this was a massive thing.

It had happened before, of course, the first temple had fallen to the Babylonians.

This is the second time it's happened.

And people sort of learned lessons from before.